ROUSSEAU. 183 



aversion, even with disgust ; yet the diction of the 

 great magician is our master ; he can impart elegance 

 to the most ordinary and mean things, in his descrip- 

 tion of them ; he can elevate the lowest, even the most 

 nasty ideas, into dignity by the witchery of his lan- 

 guage. We stand aghast after pausing, when we can 

 take breath, and can see over what filthy ground we 

 have been led, but we feel the extraordinary power of 

 the hand that has led us along. It is one of Homer's 

 great praises, that he ennobles the most low and homely 

 details of the most vulgar life, as when he brings 

 Ulysses into the swineherd's company, and paints the 

 domestic economy of that unadorned and ignoble pea- 

 sant. No doubt the diction is sweet in which he 

 warbles those ordinary strains ; yet the subject, how 

 humble soever, is pure unsophisticated nature, with no 

 taint of the far more insufferable pollution derived 

 from vice. Not so Rousseau's subject: he sings of 

 vices, and of vices the most revolting and the most 

 base of vices which song never before came near to 

 elevate ; and he sings of the ludicrous and the offensive 

 as well as the hateful and the repulsive, yet he sings 

 without impurity, and contrives to entrance us in 

 admiration. No triumph so great was ever won by 

 diction. The work in this respect stands alone ; it is 

 reasonable to wish that it may have no imitators. 



But is it as faithful in all particulars as it is striking 

 and attractive as scrupulously faithful as the awful 

 eloquence of its commencement ought to have kept it 

 throughout? In the great majority of instances, it 

 certainly is entitled to this praise ; but exceptions, 



